


Breathless

by TheCookieOfDoom



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Friends to Lovers, Kissing, M/M, MerMay, Mermaid Mitch, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:47:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24209173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCookieOfDoom/pseuds/TheCookieOfDoom
Summary: Stiles first met the creature weeks ago while gathering samples. What started as mutual curiosity soon turned to friendship, and now becomes something more.
Relationships: Mitch Rapp/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 6
Kudos: 57





	Breathless

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dylinski](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dylinski/gifts).



> For the full context: Stiles is a marine biologist working for Monterey Bay Aquarium!

Stiles is waiting out on the dock as he usually does this time of night. The late hour means most of the nearby pier is closed, with only the bars staying open for rowdy patrons. The tourists are an ever-present swarm in the distance, lit back warm lights all up and down Cannery Row, but Stiles is certain no one will notice him against the back drop of black water. Small boats dip and bob on either side of him.

It's easier this way, even if some small part of Stiles is afraid of the leviathans that lurk in the ocean's depths. It doesn’t matter how many hours he spends kitted up beneath the waves, exploring the ocean and collecting samples for his work; there’s always that lingering fear of the unknown. It doesn’t help that he, better than anyone, knows just how much humans _don’t_ know about the ocean, and the creatures within.

Stiles is kicking his feet in the frigid water when he hears a splash, and the black water is broken by a familiar form.

"Stiles," the creature greets with a hiss, all sun-bronze skin and a narrow waist that tapers into a powerful tail, his hips shimmering with onyx scales barely distinguishable from the water around him. The moonlight glints off his slick skin and turns his black hair silver, and he's the most beautiful thing Stiles has ever seen.

"Hi," Stiles says, breathless, because even after weeks of this he still can't believe any of it's real. That this strange half-man found him stumbling his way through a kelp forest in his cumbersome gear, and rather than hide away, decided to reveal himself. He watches Mitch haul himself out of the water and onto the dock, the muscles in his back shifting under his skin, every inch of him corded with strength.

Mitch leans in closer than any human would deep appropriate—because all creatures of the ocean are used to the slide of bodies pressed too close, grouping together in clusters for protection—and grins, his slitted eyes sparkling. Distant light from the pier makes them glow a burnished gold. "Want to show you something,” he says.

Stiles, filled with more curiosity than he can contain, would never deny such an offer.

"I don't have my gear."

"You won't need it." Mitch doesn't give Stiles the chance to ask any questions—he knows by now that the only way to stop Stiles from talking is to shut him up. It's easy for Mitch, when his mere presence is enough to render Stiles speechless.

They're already close enough that Stiles can feel Mitch's breath on his skin, yet he pulls Stiles even closer, pressing damp, webbed hands tipped with sharp claws to Stiles' face, holding him still. The moon casts a soft, romantic glow over both of them and Stiles swallows thickly, wondering if Mitch intends to kiss him. He parts his lips in a silent question that he never gets the chance to voice, before Mitch presses their lips together in an open-mouthed kiss. Stiles gasps, and Mitch exhales salty sea air into his lungs.

He's cold. That's the first thing Stiles notices. He's thought about this before, what it would be like to kiss Mitch, if it would be like kissing a fish. Which is stupid, because Mitch is close enough to human where it counts. But his lips are cold and soft and he tastes like the ocean, and it's over before Stiles ever has a chance to do much more than gasp.

Without waiting for a reaction, Mitch slips back into the water, mercurial as always. Stiles lunges forward, almost throwing himself into the water after him, catching Mitch by the wrist.

"Wait!" A thousand thoughts are running through Stiles' mind—why did Mitch kiss him? Was it bad? Did he not like it? Can he try again? —when Mitch trills at him; a distinctly inhuman sound that always makes Stiles' heart flutter.

"Come on," Mitch tells him. He wraps his nimble fingers around Stiles' wrist in turn, feeling the rapid pulse of his heart. The tips of his claws rasp delicately over the thin skin covering Stiles’ veins. It would take nothing for him to slice through muscle and sinew and bone, but that’s not what Mitch wants from Stiles.

Mitch falls easily beneath the small lapping waves, black water swallowing him up to his shoulders. Stiles leans over the edge of the dock, one hand braced on the splintered old wood. When Mitch looks at him like that, his eyes dark and intent, Stiles would follow him anywhere. When Mitch applies the slightest pressure, drawing him in, he’s helpless to do anything but fall.

The cold water is a shock to his system. Stiles has the wherewithal to gasp a lungful of precious oxygen before Mitch pulls him beneath the surface, the sharp inhumanness of his features softened through the lens of the water.

Mitch wraps his arms around Stiles' middle, holding their bodies pressed together. The rough-smooth of his scales catch and slide against Stiles' board shorts as his powerful tale propels them deep underwater. The moon—full, like a luminous pearl in the sky—begins to fade away above them.

Stiles wraps his arms around Mitch for the security of having something to hold on to; when his lungs begin to burn after just over a minute, he slaps at Mitch's shoulder frantically, because he cannot breathe and Mitch is still pulling him deeper.

 _I'm going to drown,_ Stiles wants to scream, but he can't risk releasing what air is still trapped in his lungs, even as the blood pounds in his skull from the pressure, and his vision blackens at the edges. Or is that just the depths pressing in around them?

When Stiles can't take it anymore, he exhales in a rush. The bubble of carbon dioxide ripple through Mitch's hair and towards the surface. Stiles looks up to find a kelp forest blocking out the light, reedy tendrils closing in around them. He’s trapped.

His heart is pounding and his skull is pounding and all Stiles can think is that he should have listened to all the sailors that came before him, telling tales of beautiful sirens that drag their quarry beneath the waves to drown.

All Stiles wants to know is: why? He thought Mitch was his friend.

They can't have been swimming for longer than two minutes, three at the most, when Mitch takes Stiles by the shoulders and violently shakes him. Stiles feels like his eyes are spinning in his skull, and he can barely make out the scowl on Mitch's handsome, cruel face. Mitch bares his sharp teeth and hisses.

"Breathe, idiot," Mitch tells him. Stiles doesn’t know how he’s able to perfectly understand his voice. He shakes his head. Eyes widening—because he knows humans will drown without oxygen, he has to know—Mitch shakes him again, and when that doesn't work, he constricts Stiles in a hug that forces him to gasp, flooding his lungs with water. It hurts, a violent pressure that makes Stiles choke.

The taste of sea water is normally so strong with salt that it makes Stiles retch. Now, once he gets used to the feeling of fluid in his chest, it's as fresh as the air above the surface, filling Stiles' lungs, granting Stiles the ability to breathe. He heaves in desperate breaths, and fixes Mitch with wild eyes. His nails are like claws where they dig into the creature’s shoulders.

"What's happening to me?" he shouts. This time there are no bubbles to filter to the surface. Mitch grins wickedly and traces one claw over Stiles' parted lips.

"Made you breathe," he answers simply, like it should have been obvious. Like _any_ of this could possibly be obvious.

Stiles must have suffered minor brain damage while struggling not to breathe, because the only thing that comes across as obvious is: of course, Mitch didn't kiss him just for the hell of it. Why would he?

But Stiles finds it hard to feel sorry for himself when he's so far beneath the surface ion the arms of a mythical creature, breathing on his own with no assistance. It's like he's walked straight into one of his dreams, only It's real. He hopes it's real.

"Is this what you wanted to show me?"

"No."

Without Mitch to hold him down Stiles begins drifting towards the surface; humans are naturally buoyant creatures, and Mitch has to catch Stiles by the ankle when he drifts too far away, pulling him back down again. Stiles smiles, jittery with excitement, and wraps his arms around Mitch's neck.

"Show me, then."

Stiles finds his surprise at the bottom of the bay. The sea floor is alive with life and light. Colorful bioluminescent fish and plant life illuminates the forest of kelp and coral. Anemones skitter across the sand with crabs, and schools of fish travel in glittering swirls, stirring up the water.

"It's beautiful," Stiles breaths. What's more, he can _hear_ it. The sound of activity isn't muffled by burbling respirators and his own movements. He can hear it clear as day, like the birds that chirp outside of his window, and he may be crying at the beauty of it. It's impossible to tell when salt water surrounds him on all sides. 

***

After what could have been ages, Mitch brings Stiles back to the surface. He helps Stiles back onto the dock where they met with a hearty shove, watching while Stiles coughs a lung's worth of water back into the ocean from which it was borrowed, and Stiles convinces Mitch to stay for just a few more minutes. He's exhausted, but still alive with euphoria.

"How long does this last?" Stiles asks, touching his throat.

"I don’t know," Mitch responds, lying beside Stiles on the aged wood. His tail hangs into the water below, fins flicking in the shallow waves. "Be careful."

"You'll just have to kiss me again, then." Mitch looks at Stiles quizzically, like _he's_ the mythical creature that by rights should not exist. "Do you know what a kiss is?"

"Show me?"

Stiles has to exhale deeply to gain his bearings and maintain some composure, because _god yes._ "Yeah, okay, I can do that." He props himself up on his elbow and Mitch does the same, looking up at Stiles with the same curiosity he had when they first met, and he wondered what the strange, black-clad mechanical creature in his home was. Stiles brushes his fingertips over Mitch's lips, aware of the sharp teeth that lay behind his deceptively soft mouth. "It's like what you did before, to make me breathe."

"I can breathe fine," Mitch says, with a quirk to his mouth that makes Stiles wonder if he's being deliberately obtuse. He decides he can live with it if he is, if it means he will get to kiss Mitch again.

"You just, kind of…" Stiles leans in and presses their lips together in a chaste, somewhat-awkward kiss. Just as quickly he darts back to look at Mitch and see what he thinks, only to find him humming thoughtfully.

"That's it?"

Stiles blushes fiercely. " _No._ "

"Well then, _show me._ " Mitch says it like a challenge. One that Stiles is eager to accept.

Stiles leans in again, just as chaste as before. Soft kisses that go nowhere, until Stiles gains the confidence to deepen it. He threads his fingers into Mitch's damp hair and slides his tongue against his bottom lip until they part for him. Stiles' eyes flutter closed as he slips his tongue against Mitch's; he tastes like the ocean without the overpowering salinity, a delicate brine that Stiles wouldn't mind tasting for the rest of his life.

Stiles shivers when he feels the tips of Mitch's claws scrape the nape of his neck with ticklish pressure. He gasps when Mitch pulls him closer, mouths colliding in a deeper kiss that feels like waves crashing over rocks. It's dizzying; Mitch kisses him with abandon and without restraint; where before Mitch had given Stiles the ability to breathe below water, now he's breathless above land.

Mitch pulls Stiles' bottom lip through his sharp teeth when they part, trilling happily. A smattering of bioluminescent markings that Stiles has never noticed before glow in his skin like a blanket of blue stars, and Stiles can't help thinking that it's because of him.

"Like the ocean," Mitch tells him, tapping Stiles' lips with his fingertips.

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a prompt that somehow took off into it's own fic, thanks to the delightful dylinski. If you have any similar Mer prompts before the month finishes out, feel free to drop me a comment!
> 
> And yes, Mitch is absolutely playing dumb about the kissing, he's an asshole like that.
> 
> Edit: Now more than ever it's important to hit the kudos, because ao3 isn't recording guest hits right not TT_TT


End file.
